Father Tully continued to speculate on his brother’s speculation.
The phone rang. He looked at the instrument. One light was on while another blinked. Mary O’Connor must be on line one. He pushed the button for line two. “St.…uh … uh, Joseph’s.” Rattled for a moment, he couldn’t recall which parish he was representing,
“Father Tully?”
“Tom? Tom Adams? I’m sorry I haven’t returned your call. I just finished Mass.” He didn’t bother to mention that he’d been on the phone with his brother. Why complicate matters? He had intended to return Adams’s call.
“I apologize,” Adams said. “I should have waited for your call. But I’m so worried. Have you heard anything about Mrs. Ulrich? Someone here at the office said there was a rumor that she’d been injured … shot! I’ve tried to get some information, but no one I’ve called seems to know anything solid. Or if they do, they’re not telling me. And I thought that with your connection with the police …”
My connection with the police. Ordinarily my relationship with the police department plus seventy-five cents might get me a cup of coffee, thought Father Tully. However, this was one occasion when Tom Adams was in luck. In this instance, bad luck. “Yes, Tom. I was with my brother when he was called to the scene. I’m afraid it’s bad news, Tom. The worst.”
“She’s … dead?”
“At first the police thought it was suicide.”
“Suicide!” Adams seemed dumbstruck.
“That’s what they thought initially. But now they think it was murder made up to appear suicide.”
“She’s dead then.” Adams sounded despairing.
“Yes.”
Tully waited patiently. No response. He waited longer. He thought he could hear sobbing, but very softly. “Tom? Mr. Adams? Are you there?”
Silence. Finally, “Yes, I’m here. There’s” — hope against hope-“no doubt … no doubt at all?”
“None. I saw her.” Another pause. “There’s more to the story, Tom. Mrs. Ulrich was pregnant. It was very early. The baby was no more than a few weeks along.”
Still no response.
“The police are presuming there’s a connection between her pregnancy and her death. They say that when they find the father they’ll have found the killer.”
“What!?” Adams almost shouted. “I’m the father! She was carrying my child! But I didn’t kill her. I wouldn’t kill her. I couldn’t kill her!”
Father Tully could think of nothing to say.
“We were going to be married … at least I asked her-just yesterday. How could you possibly believe that I would kill the woman I was going to marry, much less kill my own child!?”
“Mr. Adams …” Father Tully was near dumbfounded. “I didn’t believe that. I had no way of knowing you were the father!”
Someone must’ve entered Adams’s office or at least come to the doorway; Tully could faintly hear a female voice … something about the afternoon mail; there was a letter marked “personal.”
She must’ve put the mail on his desk. Father Tully heard the sound of papers being shifted about.
“Oh, my God! It’s from her-it’s from Barbara! Father, I’ll call you right back. It’s from Barbara!” He hung up, none too gently.
Absently, Father Tully also hung up. Words swam in his mind: “She was carrying my child. But I didn’t kill her. I wouldn’t kill her. I couldn’t kill her!” Adams’s words were clogging Father Tully’s brain. It was such an odd sensation.
Then the final piece of the puzzle fell into place. And it was as if Father Tully had been unaware he had even been engaged in the game.
He thought about it from this angle and that. He searched his memory for events, people, and what those people had said. At best he had not thought any of these elements might be significant clues that would eventually solve a mystery. But it was all taking shape.
Uneasy, he checked his watch. It was now ten minutes since Tom Adams had hung up, promising to call right back. Father Tully quite naturally assumed that Adams had hung up in order to read Barbara’s letter-a message from the dead.
But reading a letter would not require ten minutes-especially since it was Adams who had desperately wanted to talk to the priest.
What could be the cause for Adams’s not returning the call as promised? What was going on? Tully shuddered as he considered the possibilities. He dialed Adams’s number.
“Adams Bank and Trust; office of Mr. Adams. This is Lucille; how may I help you?”
“This is Father Tully. I was just speaking with Mr. Adams. He said he would return my call right away. Is he there?”
She caught the agitation in the priest’s voice. “No, Father.” Her tone became perturbed. “No. He … he just left his office.”
“Do you know where he went?”
“N … no. He didn’t say. Would you like me to-”
There was no point in continuing this conversation. Time was of the essence. The priest didn’t know what was going on at the bank, but he sensed danger and impending tragedy. He dialed homicide, identified himself, and asked for his brother.
“Lieutenant Tully is on the street.”
“Whereabouts on the street?”
The officer chuckled. “He’s in his car, Father-on the far east side.”
Too far away. He’ll never be able to get downtown in time! Another cop. He had to get another cop. But who? He knew so few. The bread eater-the priest’s mnemonic for one of Zoo’s cops. “How about Sergeant Mangiapane?”
“One second.”
The line clicked; a phone was picked up. “Mangiapane,” a preoccupied voice said.
“This is Father Tully. I need you right away.”
“Oh, hi, Father. What’s the problem?”
“I think it’s a matter of life or death.”
“You want Zoo?”
“He’s too far away. It’s gotta be you.”
Mangiapane hesitated a millisecond. “Okay, Father: Shoot.”
“You’ve got to get over to Adams Bank and Trust headquarters. Mr. Adams’s office. I’ll meet you there-”
“But what-?”
“No time to explain. There’s no time. Just hurry, please-fast as you can!”
“I’m gone!” There was a click answered by the one from the priest’s phone.
Father Tully raced his rented car down Jefferson toward Woodward and the skyscraper that housed the headquarters of Adams Bank. He left the car double-parked on the street amid honking horns and imprecations not ordinarily directed at a man of the cloth.
The elevator seemed to barely move. He struck the wall in frustration. Hurry! Hurry! Hurry! Should he have taken the stairs? Immediately the thought of a run up twelve flights made him realize he would have left his game on the stairway. When the car finally reached the twelfth floor, he almost hurled himself through the not yet fully opened doors, banging his shoulder in the process. He shook his head as if to shake the pain from his arm.
“Did he come back?” he asked as he hurtled past an astonished Lucille into Adams’s office.
“No … no, he didn’t,” a startled Lucille said to the space recently occupied by the priest. “Father, you can’t go in there!” She followed the priest into the inner office.
“Oh yes, I can.” Tully rifled through papers near the phone on Adams’ desk. “You can call … uh … Nancy Groggins. She was there when he invited me to visit anytime at home or work.”
“Well, that may be-” Lucille was becoming huffy; even if he was a priest, he had no right” You have no right to bust in here.…” Her increasingly angry protestation gained steam.
No letter. There was no letter from Barbara … or at least he couldn’t find it. Then he caught sight of a piece of paper obviously ripped from the desk calendar. It bore a single word, written in big, bold letters, JUDAS!
By now Father Tully was accustomed to Tom Adams’s regular reference to biblical figures and features. Judas was the quintessential traitor. Judas was one of those chosen to be closest to Jesus.
Who would play Judas to Tom Adams? Someone closest to him-one of the executive vice presidents. What did Tom Adams hold most precious? Independence-that his bank remain independent. Who of the three executives would be in a position to sell out the bank? Who, by manipulating figures, could show false profits and losses … lull the president into thinking his bank was secure when it was not? Jack Fradet!
This conclusion was reached in only a few moments. “Where are the executives’ offices?”
Lucille was still sputtering vehemently. “One floor down,” she answered before she realized her upbraiding had been interrupted. But Father Tully was already gone, running toward the stairs. Again he led with his shoulder, pushing against the stairwell door. Open, damn you! Then he realized that he had to turn the knob and pull to open the door. He hurtled down the stairs, taking some two at a time while praying that he wouldn’t trip and topple down the rest of the way.
This time the door did open outward. He burst through it. Another dash down another corridor. His chest heaved; his breath pounded in his ears. There! The nameplate he was seeking.
“You can’t go in there-!” But he was past her and into the inner office.
He found just about what he had expected to see.
Tom Adams, jacketless and, for him, disheveled, held a gun pointed squarely at an obviously terrified Jack Fradet. Adams stole a quick glance at the priest and just as quickly returned total attention to the cowering Fradet.
“Tom!” The priest was almost shouting. “Put the gun down. Please! It’s not worth it. He’s just not worth it. There are better ways. You’ll just ruin your life. Everything you’ve worked for will go down the drain. Please. Put down the gun!”
“Father’s right,” said a commanding voice from the office doorway. “There’s a desk in front of you, Mr. Adams. Put the gun on the desk. Carefully please.” The cavalry, in the person of Sergeant Mangiapane, weapon drawn, had arrived. Father Tully breathed a half sigh of relief.
“You don’t understand. You don’t understand what this traitor has done.” Adams, still holding the gun, spoke in an imploring tone.
“I think I do,” said Father Tully. “But the place to settle this is in the courtroom. Not here.”
From the maelstrom of thoughts whirling through the priest’s mind, one was suddenly uppermost: he knew what kind of a person Tom Adams was at his core. “Tom, what you’re thinking of doing is a sin-a mortal sin. It’s murder. You’re going against one of God’s commandments. God does not want you to do this, Tom. I’m a priest and I’m telling you: God wants you to put that gun down.”
He did not turn his gaze from Fradet. But Adams moved slightly. Then, slowly, he lowered the gun and laid it on the desk.
“Now, Mr. Adams,” Mangiapane said in a calm, steady tone, “I want you to step back from the desk.”
Adams did as he was ordered. Mangiapane stepped forward, picked up the gun, then holstered his own. He patted down both Adams and Fradet, the former in a seeming daze, the latter in a state of shock. Mangiapane turned to Father Tully. “What’s going on here, Father?”
“Fraud, I think, at the very least,” the priest said. “And maybe lots more. Sergeant, seeing as how I’m the one who called you in on this, would you humor me? I need a few favors.”
Mangiapane’s cocked eyebrow evidenced his uncertainty.
“Could you give me a little time alone with Mr. Adams, make sure that Mr. Fradet doesn’t leave, and, finally, get my brother over here?”
Mangiapane deliberated. While such a procedure was in no police textbook he’d ever studied, he could find nothing substantially problematic in these requests. Neither Adams nor Fradet was armed. Adams was not likely to step out an eleventh-floor widow. Fradet could be detained in one of the other offices. And, in fact, Mangiapane himself dearly wanted his superior officer here as quickly as possible. “You got it, Father. But make it snappy. Zoo was heading in when I left. I’ll call him now; he should be here in a couple of minutes.”
Mangiapane left the office with Fradet literally in hand. As he made his way through the outer office, he ordered a host of spectators back to work.
“Tom,” Father Tully asked, “what was in the letter?”
“Letter?”
“The letter you just got from Barbara … the letter you’re holding.
Adams slumped into a chair. As he did so, the now crumpled letter fell from his left hand to the floor. The priest bent to pick it up. “Okay if I read it?”
Adams nodded.
Tully read the handwritten letter aloud.
Dearest Tom,
Of course I’ll marry you. I wasn’t quite prepared for all you said today. After I recovered from the surprise and shock, I realized what a generous and loving proposal you made. I’m flattered-and grateful.
But you may not want to marry me after I tell you something I want you to hear from me and from no one else.
Here the handwriting became somewhat less legible. As if she were reluctant to go on-or at least undecided as to whether to go on.
I told you there was no love or lovemaking between me and Al. That is the truth. But I created the impression that you were my one and only partner. That is not true.
While I was with you, I was having affairs with Jack, Lou, and Marty, your three execs. It pains me even to read this as I write it. I honestly didn’t know which one of you four was my child’s father. I notified each of you about my condition. At Al’s wake I made a separate appointment with each of you.
I was desperate. I needed money for me and the child. It wasn’t that Al had left me-us-penniless; I wanted enough so we’d never have to be concerned about financial security. The other three were married. What I wanted from them was financial support-not marriage.
As I talked to each of them I fabricated office scuttlebutt that hinted that they were guilty of some banking crime. It was sheer blackmail on my part.
Not only did I strike out on the crime charge, but I learned that two of them are incapable of fathering a child. And the third had no reason to think he was the father.
But one thing may be of immediate importance. In bluffing my way to blackmail, I accused Jack Fradet of financial skullduggery-to provide a golden parachute for himself if or when he was let go. That charge seemed to touch a raw nerve. He looked like he wanted to kill me on the spot. So I backed off, more in fear than anything else. Then he calmed down. Regardless, I think I got close to a major problem for the bank and for you.
I feel better now that I’ve told you; I know you’ll be able to handle it-
“Of course …” Adams interrupted the priest’s reading. “I couldn’t understand why we were showing such a profit. But he wasn’t building a golden parachute. No, more than likely he was creating a false sense of security: he was paving the way for a takeover.”
Father Tully nodded, and returned to the letter.
Any other secret I may have is mine alone. Just please trust that there is no other problem that will interfere with the happiness of our marriage-that is, if you still want me.
None of you four knew about the others. There is always the possibility that they will learn. That’s why I wanted you to hear it from me.
I await your response.
With love,
Barbara
Oh, my! Father Tully had suspected something was going on between Barbara and the executives, but-oh, my!
He puzzled over her statement, Any other secret I may have is mine alone. One would think that after the first momentous secret, there couldn’t be too many more. Evidently, the final secret seemingly was not of a nature liable to disrupt an otherwise happy marriage.
Father Tully could not know what only Joyce Hunter’s husband and daughter knew-that Barbara was a lesbian.
“Would you?” the priest asked. “Would you have married Barbara knowing what is in this letter?”
Adams blinked several times as if returning from profound abstraction. “Would I have married her? Of course. She was carrying my child. I am not without sin. Who is?”
Silence.
“I am grateful to you, Father,” Adams said finally, wearily. “You and you alone stopped me from doing something foolish and wrong. How did you know …? How did you know what I was about to do? How did you know where I was?”
Tully pondered the questions. All that was on his mind, all that had come to him in an extended blinding flash was not yet coordinated to the point where he could explain it logically.
But he would try to address Adams’s questions. “The police were working on the theory that if they found the father of Barbara’s child, they would also have her killer-the idea being that the father didn’t want the baby, so he killed both mother and child.
“But when you claimed that you were the father and also claimed that you hadn’t killed Barbara, I believed you were telling the truth. That destroyed the hypothesis that the father of the child had killed its mother. As good a theory as that was in providing a motive for the killing, since you are the father and you did not kill Barbara, there had to be another motive for her murder.
“Then you told me you had just received a letter from her. You said you’d call me right back. When you didn’t, I called you. Your secretary said you’d left your office.
“Why would you have done that? Why hadn’t you returned the call? It had to have something to do with that letter. Barbara had to have written something that greatly disturbed you-enough to force you to some sort of action. Maybe she guessed who her killer would be? Whatever, it was something cataclysmic, I was sure of that.
“I called Sergeant Mangiapane and then I got here as fast as I could.”
The priest had Adams’s attention. “But how did you know where to find me? If you had been a minute or two later, I would have done the most foolhardy thing in my entire life.”
“That was more luck than anything. I was looking on your desk for Barbara’s letter when I spotted the word you had written on a scrap of paper.”
“‘Judas’?”
“Yes-Judas. An odd word to scribble. But it told me you were after someone you felt had betrayed you. I recalled what you had told me at your banquet: how your bank was not one of the conglomerates, but that the big banks were always out looking for smaller banks to devour.
“You were dedicated to keeping the bank financially alive and well. Yours is a family bank and you are dedicated to keeping it that way. You even belong to the Independent Bankers Association to join with other independents who want to avoid forced mergers.
“I knew from talking to Jack Fradet and others at your dinner that his job as comptroller of this bank is, among other things, to gather information and to assess the financial status of the bank. If he gave you the wrong information, misinformed you, the bank could be weakened-a ready victim for a takeover.
“He’s the one who could best play the traitor. You went looking for him. I went looking for you.”
Adams nodded slowly. “When I read in Barbara’s letter about Fradet’s reaction to her bluff, everything fell into place. I had thought the bank was having some extraordinary good fortune. That misinformation led us into one mode of business while we should actually have been going in the opposite direction. He deliberately set us up for disaster.
“After I read her letter I immediately checked the books. Now that I was looking for it and knew what to look for, I saw what Jack had done. I could have killed him!” He shook his head sadly. “I almost did.”
“And this gives the police a different motive for Barbara’s murder,” said Father Tully. “She died not because she was carrying the killer’s child, but because the murderer believed-falsely-that Barbara Ulrich was onto his game.”
“Now … if only they can prove it,” Adams said.
“What’s going on here?” A demanding Zoo Tully stood in the doorway.
His brother looked up brightly. “Have we got some stories to tell you!